@ Heather Wells:
Thanks for your information. You have made my …

@ Heather Wells:
Thanks for your information. You have made my day.
“….come in either a rusted finish or can be powder coated…”
Every dark cloud has its silver lining, thank goodness they didn’t pick the rusted finish.

I’ve printed out the image and am going to take it to our Warlukurlangu Artists centre.

I can see a mass switch to dot rabbits.

Frank Baarda Also Commented

They must be joking!@Alex Nelson (Posted April 18, 2017 at 10:29 am)
I stand corrected. Nothing wrong with rust. From a geological perspective there is not much difference between ochre and rust anyway, both are oxides of iron.
Mind you, Joan Baez’s song “Diamonds and Rust” would lose much of its poetry if it was called “Tetrahedrally crystalized carbon and ochre”.

They must be joking!@Interested community Member (the first comment). Sometimes I’m a bit slow off the mark. “A better choice would have been a Kangaroo….”
Indeed!- A Kangaroo Court!

They must be joking!No Kieran, they are not joking.
A sense of humor is not something those in authority in our Northern Territory are known for.

Recent Comments by Frank Baarda

Coniston Massacre remembered@ Kathy: I attended the 90th anniversary.
A descendant of the Murray family made a beautiful speech which was received in the same spirit in which she gave it.
There was virtually no rancour or animosity evident.
It was all about telling and acknowledging what happened.
Kathy, there was no “wallowing” in the past.
As for Dick Kimber, he’s a historian (and a good one at that), and that is what historians do – they study and tell the past.

Gas, fracking: potential benefits to Aborigines enormousI wasn’t aware the the NT Land Rights Act had a 10% statutory royalty and would appreciate any readers who know to confirm or clarify this.
@ Charmaine Roth: You seem to have done your homework on this. I started my career as a well-site geologist in conventional oil and gas exploration, so am not able to comment with any conviction on modern unconventional gas production.
Having seen air photos of a “fracking” gas field, the well spacing seems small and I find it hard to imagine each well producing one MMCFD of gas over a sustained period, certainly not shallow low cost wells.
Any chance you can enlighten us on well spacing, depth, and rate and duration of production in a typical field?
@ Steve Brown: love the typos! A “vicious” liquid (viscous) in your earlier comment, and “leeching” in your latest. Are they perhaps Freudian Slips?
It is also my understanding royalties are based on “profit” rather than gross value of product. Reminds me of the joke where an accountant is asked “what is our profit?” and replies “what would you like it to be?”
Price-transference and tax minimization by multinationals and locals alike is alive and well in Australia. Our very own Prime Minister has a stash in the Cayman Islands, and the wife of a former Prime Minister was running an international jobs provider business.
The “fracking” industry reeks of slash and burn, not unlike the mono-culture of sugar cane a few centuries ago, and current palm oil production.
I have trouble making a clear distinction in my mind between these investors and captains of industry and – say – bank robbers or drug dealers (not to mention the alcohol sellers in the NT).
As for the bonanza supposedly awaiting Aboriginal Australia, there is a meteorological term Virga – it is rain which doesn’t reach the ground, the Warlpiri have a word for it.
@ Jaap Vogel: “Ik ben het 100% eens met je dat de verdeeling van dat geld niet helemaal deugt”
(I agree with you entirely (100%) that the way that money (royalties) is distributed leaves a lot to be desired.)

[Hi Frank, Thank you for pointing out the typos in Steve Brown’s comments. I corrected them. Erwin Chlanda, Editor.]

TOs seek to block pipeline. Hendo in the gas business.Erwin: Craig is right.
In the folder holding my expired passport, there is a message from the then responsible minister: The Australian Government will assist Australians in trouble overseas whenever possible, wrote Alexander Downer.
Tell that to David Hicks and Julian Assange!
The very same Alexander Downer as the foreign minister put down Kevin Rudd’s ability to speak Mandarin, which in hindsight is about the most positive aspect of KR.
AD felt that there was no need to learn foreign languages, an opinion that qualifies him to high office as much as Australia’s Cultural Ambassador – Les Patterson.

No takers for national nuke waste at public meetingThe police complex in Yuendumu I am told cost $7.6m. The contract for the Wadeye police complex was let if I recall correctly for $24m.
As Barbara Shaw pointed out, $10m isn’t much if seen in such a context.
As for community consultations, I’ve seen it often enough how Government officials operate. They never take NO for an answer. They’ll come back again and again until the exhausted community caves in, or fails to turn up at a critical poorly advertised meeting.
They’re very good at “smoke and mirrors” and rarely address pertinent questions that don’t fit in with their pre-determined outcomes.

“Our” gas: If you think Inpex is big …Either very much has changed in the oil and gas industry since I started my career half a century ago as a “gravel picker” (geologist) in the “Oil Patch”, or we are dealing with a case of “counting one’s chickens before they’re hatched”.
To his credit Dave Tollner speaks in round numbers, but there is no mention of how this “… almost unimaginable …” quantity of gas was derived at.
“The Territory’s onshore reserves are four times as big, around 200 trillion cubic feet, says Treasurer and Mines Minister Dave Tollner”.
Unless he’s misquoted, and if he can prove it, Dave Tollner would have no trouble finding a replacement job.
He would save exploration companies a great deal of money by working for them as an oil and gas reservoir engineer who has developed a system of assessing reserves without the need for drilling etc.!